Mayor Mitch Landrieu continues to find the deep pockets of campaign donors, raising $352,839 since Christmas Eve in his bid for a second term as New Orleans' top elected official. It's a sum that could make an already uphill climb even steeper for his chief rival, former state civil Judge Michael Bagneris.

Bagneris collected $126,926 between Dec. 24 and Jan. 12, but that included $50,000 of his own money, the latest campaign finance reports show. Landrieu raised $263,339 during that same time period, and another $89,500 during fundraisers last week.

The money pouring into the mayor's race has reached levels that several political observers have said would be hard to achieve in a traditionally poor city and during a still-recovering national economy. Danatus King, president of the New Orleans chapter of the NAACP, is also mounting a campaign for mayor, having raised $4,500 since Dec. 24, his reports show.

Landrieu's list has its fair share of out-of-town donors, including $29,500 from political action committees, but much of his money came from New Orleans addresses -- a sign he still has a local wealthy donor list that he held in reserve for the campaign's final days, said Ed Chervenak, a political scientist at the University of New Orleans.

"For Bagneris, that well may be running dry," he said, referring to the judge's decision to inject his personal money into his campaign.

After spending more than $577,000 since Christmas, including $222,559 on television and radio advertising, Landrieu is left with $883,426 on hand to spend before the Feb. 1 election. Bagneris has $201,718 after spending about $145,000 -- including $83,192 on radio and television.

Dollars yield diminishing returns at a certain point in a short campaign, Chervenak said, a factor that Bagneris camp likely hopes will help equalize the sizable difference in the candidates' bank accounts. With 10 days left, both candidates could be hard pressed to spend their remaining cash, but Landrieu holds an obvious advantage.

"The mayor could just carpet bomb the airwaves with ads," Chervenak said. Landrieu is also spending considerable cash on airtime during expensive events, including Saints games and prime-time programming. "Whether people are paying attention or not is another question."

The tenor of Landrieu's ads also offers some evidence of the mayor's confidence he can win a second term: So far, they have all been positive. The political theory goes that a worried incumbent will go negative, hard and fast, against an opponent he fears, Chervenak said.

Both candidates paid political groups that endorsed them, according to the reports. Landrieu shelled out $4,000 to the Crescent City Democratic Association, $2,500 to the Spanish American Voters Alliance and $15,000 to the Independent Democratic Electors Association. On Jan. 19, Bagneris gave $12,500 to the Black Organization for Leadership Development, or BOLD; $15,000 to the Louisiana Independent Federation of Electors, or LIFE; and $5,000 to the Louisiana Democratic Party, whose Orleans Parish executive committee endorsed him earlier this month.